


someone's someone

by 127cosmos



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Childhood to College, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, I'll add them as I write the chapters, M/M, Minor Character Death, University, broken family dynamic, there will probably be other's too, this is going to be an angsty fic but i'm a soft stan so we'll see how that works
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:48:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29541225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/127cosmos/pseuds/127cosmos
Summary: Jaemin and Jeno meet a few times in their young teenage years, by coincidence or fate, and instantly form some type of relationship. However, time separates them until they enter the same university. Jaemin realizes while he was growing up and had been saved by Jeno and his comfort during his childhood, things have happened to Jeno that Jaemin has no clue about and it completely changed the kindhearted, smiling boy he knew.Jaemin slowly starts to feel butterflies, like he did when he was a kid, and all he wants to do is love Jeno with his whole heart. He isn’t sure if Jeno is even capable of loving anyone at this point, most of all himself, but Jaemin will do anything to try.
Relationships: Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin
Kudos: 2





	someone's someone

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!  
> I am writing this entirely for fun and it shouldn't be taken too seriously.  
> Of course, all the events and things that happen in this fic are fiction and not associated with the actual people at all!  
> I hope you guys enjoy this fic because it's really fun to write and I'd like to continue it~
> 
> The song I mention in this chapter is called Cannonball by Damien Rice > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yqM--IMkX4

Chapter 1: I Met You When I Was 13  
Jaemin always thought hate was too strong of a word to use frivolously, however, if he had to say he hated something, right now, he wouldn’t hesitate to say he hated train rides. Maybe it was the passing of the sky, azure and moving so quickly past him it almost felt still outside his train window. Or possibly it was the devastatingly bitter dark chocolate-covered almonds his mother had given him to snack on; there was nothing but good intentions behind his mother’s gift, however, he had never disliked anything more than something that was supposed to be eternally sweet being bitter. But most probably it was the fact he was on this dumb train at all, going faster and farther away from his mother than he ever wished to. Definitely, because he didn’t want to spend an entire semester, the last of his elementary school years, in a town he didn’t know with his grandfather who, realistically, he didn’t know either. It’s absolutely because he hated his father who left him and his mother penniless and homeless and hopeless, directly causing him to be on this stupid train in the first place.  
In every memory Jaemin could recall, he had always loved the countryside, sunshine, fresh air, less crowded than his small alleyway apartment in the city. Today though, the once blissful countryside filled with nothing but butterflies and summer breezes felt cold and dismal, despite the calendar has just turned to August and there not being the slightest chill in the air. They walked from the station in stiff silence, his grandfather following a few steps behind holding his suitcase and making the situation even more unbearably uncomfortable than it already was. Jaemin tried to imagine the leaves changing colors and the cobalt sky becoming a sea of amber hues. He tried to imagine fall coming in quickly and winter barging in just a fast. He tried to imagine this semester being over, walking in the opposite direction, going back to his mother and his home and everything he knew. But the ground was not covered in a blanket of snow and his grandfather kept grunting behind him, dragging his suitcase wheels along the gravel on the road. This was going to be a long semester.  
Somehow it was completely fitting just how ill-fitting Jaemin’s uniform was. His grandfather and he had gone out the day before school started to pick up a secondhand uniform. Since he’d only be here a semester anyway, it didn’t really matter to Jaemin how well his uniform fit or if he even had one at all, but still. Even having cuffed his pants and rolled up his sleeves, it was comically oversized. He couldn’t even imagine a 5th grader that would ever fit into this uniform, to begin with. The hallways were about as comfortable as his uniform, in that he felt entirely too small and unwanted within. Even after a month, the solidarity of this place hadn’t gone away a single bit. Jaemin hadn’t been interested in making friends and now he was too stubborn to give up his pride. Plus, he was incredibly introverted, and making friends was something he wasn’t even sure he knew how to do. He was still one of the only two kids who sat alone at school and the other one hadn’t even shown up for two weeks. Something about the fact that the only kid more of an outcast than himself was absent more than 50 percent of the time was insufferably tragic to Jaemin. Accordingly, Jaemin sat twirling his daisy chain bracelet around mindlessly, not even daring to look at his untouched lunch. Eating alone was definitely worse than simply sitting alone so he’d been refusing to eat lunch for about a week now.  
The only part of the day Jaemin could look forward to was his walking to his house. The precious time in between being at school and being home. Walking home was definitely better than walking to school, too. Walking to school, he’d have the dread of having to sit in a classroom full of kids who made him feel even more uncomfortable than he did all on his own. He’d dread homework he’d forgotten to do, tests he’d have to take, and lunch he wouldn’t be eating. It wasn’t the same going home, his grandfather never cared if he just held up in his room the whole night so that’s what he’d made a habit of doing the past month and a half. Not that his grandfather believed him or cared, but he’d once said that on Tuesday’s he had decided to join a club and would be home late. This was solely to give Jaemin more time alone. Not the sit by himself at lunch and in the hallway’s kind of alone and not the eat dinner in silence then lock himself in his room alone either. The good kind of alone, the kind of alone Jaemin loved. Although he preferred city streets, he’d come to develop a certain fondness for rushing rapids and the grazing sound of the wind against the tips of the buckwheat plants. The leaves have started turning and the sky has started sinking into the sunset earlier in the evening. Jaemin slipped his shoes off, holding them in his left hand between his fingers. He wanted to feel the crunch of the leaves more clearly under his feet. He’d never been able to do this in the city, the streets were too dirty, and his mother was always worrying about him freezing his toes off. But here, feeling closer to nature seemed like the most obvious thing to do.  
Somehow, Jaemin had come to actually start looking forward to his Tuesday walks along the small brook at the edge of town. Just beyond the placid stream, the evergreens had grown up like a coliseum around the quaint town; cleared out enough as not to disrupt the 1500 residents of the homely farming village, but dense and luscious just outside the town’s limits, completely closing it off and separating it from the rest of the world. Jaemin thought it reminded him most of home. He'd felt like the carelessly painted yellow walls of his family's small apartment in the city had the same impression. That was one of the reasons he went to the forest so much, that and the fact that neither his grandfather nor his classmates would bother wasting their time or energy to interrupt his solitude. Winter had just barely started testing itself out in the breeze. Jaemin, knowing the path well enough by now to not have to devote his full attention to walking, swung his backpack around and retrieved a worn photograph from the front zipper. It wasn't a flattering photo; a smudge on the top left where his mother’s coffee had once sat a little too long leaving a ghost ring on the paper and a less-than-loving tear down the left side, which was Jaemin’s doing, completely removing his father from the photograph. Nevertheless, he always gave this photo his full, undivided attention. His mother's full and rosy cheeks; much different than the last time he had seen her, looking gaunt and worn waving goodbye to him at the train station. He was 11 in the photograph, but he couldn’t seem to convince himself it had only been taken 2 and a half years ago.  
In his own sort of silent rebellion, Jaemin frequently stripped his shoes and socks off and let his feet be completely submerged in the banks. Sand would dance through his toes and the water couldn’t help but climb up the lower half of his pants leg and he just knew that neither his mother nor father would approve, which made him love doing it. He always said he was mad at his father, and he was. But he was also, silently and more intimately, upset with his mother. He thought they were supposed to go through everything together, especially now, but she left him here. Rationally, he knew why she did it but he was a little kid and he didn’t know how to listen to rationality, he only listened to his feeling. So he sat, with his feet in the bank, one headphone in, listening to the sounds of the wind in the leaves and the fish coming up then retreating with the other ear, and he stayed like that for a long time. It wasn't until dusk was desperately clinging to the horizon that he heard a faint melody emerge from within the dense forest behind him. Jaemin almost wasn’t sure he really heard it; maybe he had mistaken it for a melody in the song playing from his own headphones. But the song he was listening to was a piano arrangement of Gymnopedie no. 1 by Satie and the sounds he heard coming from the wood were distinctly and indisputably that of a rather tattered sounding guitar. Jaemin removed his sole earbud and reunited them inside of his pocket, hastily stuffing his socks into his shoes and gathering his things. He wanted to follow the sound but no more than three steps away from the brook and Jaemin stood still. Suddenly, it occurred to him, that maybe it was a very strange person, a strange and dangerous person who came out into the deep, dense of the woods in the moments foregoing nightfall, to play songs on a tattered guitar and lure children into their layer. Then Jaemin remembers, he too might have been a strange, although not dangerous person, sitting so recklessly on a brook for hours in silence directly parallel to that deep, dense wood.  
He took a sharp inhale, slowly letting out before gathering a bit of courage and continuing forwards. Just as Jaemin dared to enter beyond the edge of the tree’s he was stopped again; this time by something other than fear though. He wasn’t scared at all, but he wondered if this might not get him into more trouble than anything worth being scared of. Suddenly, he heard a boy singing. Not just singing, but luring Jaemin in. He hadn’t ever been out to sea but he imagined this to be exactly what a siren song must sound like. The boy's voice sounded careful, still feeling his words and notes, not yet comfortable with how they fit into his voice. Jaemin thought the boy must not have sung for anyone before; really the boy still didn’t know he’d sung for anyone. But Jaemin was mesmerized. Now, more cautiously, slow as to not make any loud sounds to notify the boy of his presence, Jaemin inched closer in the direction of the melody. He couldn’t recognize the song, but he decided almost instantly that it was his absolute favorite song.  
Finally, after precise steps and the holding of his breathe, Jaemin heard to voice loud and clear. He stayed in the shadow of a few large oak trees, suddenly thankful for the deep, denseness of the woods that had scared him at the initial start of the venture. All he could think of was his mother. A soft, undistinguishable melody escaping her lips as she’d water the eclectic herb garden kept on the windowsill in the kitchen. Jaemin only realized when he was 8 years old that his mother had never intended anyone to hear those songs she sang in the sunshine of their home, but to Jaemin, they were everything. Just as the feeling of the tree’s surrounding the town felt like home, this voice felt just as much like his mothers. He didn’t dare to get any closer, but he couldn’t resist peeking his head out, finding the face attached to this voice.  
At first, he didn’t recognize the boy although he could tell they were probably close to the same age, he only looked the slightest big older than Jaemin. Surely, there being only one school for the three small towns settled in the vast expanse of farmland, this boy should attend the same school as Jaemin, yet he couldn’t quite place him.  
“Of course,” Jaemin whispered, hushed and under his breathe as to not even let the fireflies beginning to ignite around him hear.  
That’s when he realized exactly who that boy was. He knew because he realized he didn’t know. He didn’t recognize the boy at all, and the only boy he hadn’t been forced to share the same unbearably small school hallways with was Jeno. Lee Jeno. The boy suddenly became shrouded in mystery. Rarely attending school anyways, Jaemin never felt it necessary to pay him much attention. He’d figured Jeno was probably a thug or at the very least just already so invested in farming he didn’t bother to pay his education any mind. But looking at him now, Jaemin was certain neither of those things was true. None of the rumors he’d been forced to overhear in the cafeteria or him the classroom seemed to have any hinge of reality to him.  
Jaemin wasn’t sure, but he could almost see the canopy of leaves opening up above Jeno, just enough and just perfect to create a spotlight for the boy's hidden performance. Jaemin watched the mole under Jeno’s eye lift up and down and his eyes crinkled to hit certain notes. He watched the fretboard and Jeno’s fingers flying across it like a stone skipping across a still lake. And he listened. He listened like he was swinging his feet in his chair, sitting at the coffee table in their horrid yellow house, his mother picking fresh basil to complete their eggs.  
And then it stopped.  
Jaemin had, lost in a memory or maybe it was a trance, forgot that Jeno wasn’t aware he was even there. He had shifted his weight from one foot to another, in doing so, crinkling leaving beneath him. Now he stood frozen, a deer in headlights, hoping that if he didn’t move then he might disappear, if he didn’t move then Jeno wouldn’t see him. He suddenly felt terribly small; hoping miraculously he would dissolve into the dirt at his feet or somehow evaporate into the air. The boy sitting an uncomfortably short distance away, his hands resting tensely against his guitar, seemed like a goliath and Jaemin was left helpless.  
“I didn’t write that,” Jeno waved his arms, motioning to his guitar which was now lying horizontally across his lap, “that song.”  
The original composure of that song was the absolute last thing on Jaemin’s mind at that moment, but somehow that quite jarring and out-of-place question relaxed him a bit. He could feel the tips of his fingers again and be again aware of the ever-encroaching frostbite on his dripping wet toes.  
“Who did?” Jaemin asked, taking the single most painfully cautious step closure to Jeno.  
“You won’t tell anyone you saw me out here, right?”  
The blatant dismissal of Jaemin’s question, although startling, didn’t come across as rude. It did, however, leave Jaemin utterly confused. From what he could see, and hear, it appeared as if Jeno had snuck out into the middle of the woods in the darkness to play the most melodic song he’d ever heard. There was nothing sinister or inappropriate occurring yet Jeno seemed terrified that Jaemin might tell on him.  
Jaemin shook his head, taking a few more courageous steps towards the boy and his guitar. Really, he just wanted Jeno to keep playing so that he could keep listening. Almost in self-defense, Jeno held his guitar suddenly upright, like it might become a shield to protect him from the stranger who had caught him singing.  
“I won’t tell anyone,” Jaemin reassured, thinking that the head shake might not have been enough to ease Jeno’s obvious anxiety. By now Jaemin’s nerves had almost completely settled; he felt like, at least in Jeno’s eyes, he had all the control in this situation which helped in calming his racing heart and shaking hands. He also realized that, as desperately as he wanted it, Jeno was not going to continue playing so long as Jaemin remained anywhere nearby. Still, Jaemin wanted to linger at the moment a bit longer.  
Jaemin never noticed how serene the school’s courtyard was; he never noticed until now, at least. He had opted to eat outside today, already worn out over the teacher’s pity if he were to take his lunch into the classroom and finding the usual hushed rumors about Jeno being passed around the cafeteria particularly unbearable to listen to. He, admittedly, did not know much more about Jeno than any of his classmates; objectively he probably knew less. That didn’t stop the feeling inside of his gut, the feeling of a connection between the two. The night before, Jeno had only waited another tension-filled moment before guardedly placing his guitar in a worn case and camouflaging the instrument under a painstakingly organized pile of leaves. Jaemin took this as his cue to leave, backing away slowly until he was far enough beneath the shadow of the leaves to turn and sprint. His heart was racing but for the first time since he had boarded that stupid train in the last days of summer, he wasn’t upset that he had come. It hadn’t mattered how brief or impersonal their interaction had been, Jaemin still felt as if the two now shared more than a secret, he felt they possibly might have shared a bond.  
It wasn’t until a thin film of snow coated the ground that Jaemin spoke to Jeno again when the latter boy finally made his anticlimactic return to school only a week and a half before winter break began. Jaemin, since their first encounter, had found himself making a habit of listening closely to the forest. Initially, he stuck to simply sneaking away on Tuesday’s but then that was no longer enough for him and he spent most of his afternoon’s searching for the melodies of a boy who didn’t know he had such an eager audience. Jaemin, although feeling a bit guilty, made sure never to reveal himself after that first day though. Those times tucked in between the trees as a fugitive had somehow made living so far away from everything and anything Jaemin knew bearable. He’d spend the days in class scribbling messy ramblings into lyrics that could finish where Jeno left off. It had become ever apparent to Jaemin that Jeno had indeed written the song he played that first day; or it would be more accurate to say, Jeno was in the process of writing that song. Jaemin searched for a week before realizing that a song like that had never existed. It wasn’t until the next time he heard the boy playing the entrancing melody that he realized it wasn’t complete. Jeno was sneaking away, deep into the woods with a shabby guitar, to finish writing this song. Jeno’s song. Spending his time like this, Jaemin would occasionally have the thought, on especially beautiful days, that maybe it was more than bearable to be here. Possibly, he was actually enjoying himself.  
Any conversation attempted about the assignment or the weather only lasted as long as the words lingered on Jaemin's lips. It had become abundantly obvious why the teacher had paired him, a boy who was getting ready to transfer, up with Jeno. In startling contrast, Jeno seemed whole-heartedly disinterested in everything and everyone.  
But Jaemin was determined. He refused to let this opportunity, given to him by what he could only describe as fate, slip through his fingers. Jaemin refused to let the suffocating silence sitting between them force him into the realization that any preconceived connection they shared was purely imagined.  
"That day, that song-" Jaemin was cut off, startled silent by the expression painted on Jeno’s face. It was as if the boy had completely forgotten their first meeting until Jaemin had brought it up right now. He found he no longer had any confidence to say anything. How could Jeno completely forgot the one thing that Jaemin had been holding onto? Was it so insignificant, the only thing keeping Jaemin sane? How could Jeno not even flinch at the mention of something Jaemin spent all of his free time thinking of?  
"You didn't tell anyone, did you?" Jeno sat up a little straighter flipping his notebook open to one of many blank pages. It looked like he hadn't written anything in that notebook save his name on the inside of the front cover.  
"No," Jaemin shook his head.  
"Of course not," he added, as though it were ridiculous for Jeno to even suggest such a thing. "I just wanted to know what it's called because I liked it and haven't been able to find it."  
"It doesn't have a name," Jeno responded, starring solely at his notebook and not even pretending to read his nonexistent notes.  
"You haven't thought of one yet?"  
"It's not my song," Jeno finally looked up, "I thought I told you that."  
Oh, Jaemin thought, so he does remember that day. He might have felt relieved that Jeno remembered, but he still couldn't read the boy at all and it left him feeling uneasy.  
Admittedly, he'd only ever heard Jeno's rendition of it but Jaemin was still absolutely positive that the song belonged to Jeno regardless of who might have originally written or sang it. It was his. It was Jeno's song. It only belonged in between the breathes escaping Jeno’s lips; the melody’s true and most comfortable home could only come from Jeno's fingers sliding across the fretboard like a choreographed dance. The longer he spent with the words Jeno declared, it was not his song, the more Jaemin found it blatantly untrue. They did not do a single bit of the assignment that afternoon.  
Walking down the now he-could-walk-it-properly-in-his-sleep familiar forest pathway for the last time, on a Tuesday, Jaemin suddenly wanted to make absolutely sure that Jeno knew he was there; that he'd been there, listening, this whole time. The confusion that Jeno had initially elicited from him, however misguided, had now turned into anger. Jaemin had spent the entire changing of fall into winter thinking the two shared a secret and that even if neither of them ever said anything about it, they both knew.  
Jaemin had never been so hyper-aware of the space his limbs occupied. In the past, his secrecy had disguised confidence he didn’t know he’d had until it was no longer there. An early December breeze, sharp as if preparing eagerly for its chance to shed snow, flushed Jaemin’s cheeks. Jeno sat, in a way that had become as familiar to Jaemin as himself, somehow softened by the light pouring through the leaves. The retreating sun grasping onto every edge of the boy who hesitantly eyed his beloved and battered guitar. Unlike that morning, the two of them sitting in suffocating desks soaked in an even more suffocating silence, the sounds of the rapids and leaves made Jaemin feel some varying degrees of leverage and comfort. Interacting with eh boy in front of him no longer felt like a perpetual free fall. He had, of course, rehearsed a rapid-fire interrogations sequence during his elective that afternoon. He was well prepared to satisfy all his curiosities in one go, however, standing there now, the only words his mouth seemed to know were “Play it again.”  
Jeno adopted a shocked expression and Jaemin, in an ill-advised attempt to regain control after his unscripted outburst, continued “I’m transferring.” Jaemin shifted his weight, letting his backpack slide down his shoulder and longer beside his feet, misplacing the thin layer of frost that had just begun to make its home on top of the grass.  
“I’m transferring. I won’t even be here in the spring,” he continued, inching closer to the boy frozen in front of him, “So, I won’t be around to tell anyone. It won’t matter and you can just play it again. You can play that song again.” Jaemin was trying desperately not to sound as desperate as he felt. By the time he finished speaking, Jeno had unpacked his guitar, leaving Jaemin in breathless anticipation.  
“Why are you transferring?” Jeno was stalling. His tone was confident but his words were not.  
“Why don’t you come to school? Why do you only come to the middle of the woods to play guitar? Why can’t I tell anyone?” He knew he was being a little careless but Jaemin was too eager. To hear the song, to ask Jeno all the things he’d longed to know, too eager at the potential of finally receiving any sort of answer.  
And Jaemin could see the effect he’d had on Jeno as if looking at the visible chips on the other boy's armor.  
"It's called Cannonball," Jeno pulled his guitar close to his chest as if it would protect him from the cold just as much as it might protect him from getting closer to Jaemin. "It's by a Western artist, Damien something, my dad has an old record I heard once."  
"So it has a name," Jaemin says mostly to himself but just loud enough that Jeno hears too.  
"It has a name,"  
Jaemin unravels his scarf from around his neck and throws it a bit haphazardly onto the ground a few feet in front of Jeno. He uses his make-shift covering and sits on it light a picnic blanket.  
"Play it again, please," Jaemin says again, a bit more careful this time, a softness filling each of his words. He'd made progress, though he'd suddenly wished to have done so much sooner than now. But, to Jaemin's surprise, Jeno actually began to play this time. The melody Jaemin had become familiar with and loved so much filled the spaces between the leaves as he sat attentively listening to every note Jeno sang. Since the first time he'd heard it, Jeno had become much more comfortable with the notes in his words. He sounded more and more like someone you'd pay money to see standing on a big stage in front of thousands of people and for that Jaemin felt a warmth in his chest. This was just for him. Sitting and listening, he wondered if butterflies could survive in the snow. He wondered if that's why they had all flooded into his stomach at that moment.  
Going back somewhere always seems to take less time than leaving in the first place. The same was true for the train ride home. Jaemin felt like he'd only had time to listen to that song once until he arrived. His mother picked him up at the train station, open arms, and her smile had returned to her face with a new fire. They had so much time to catch up on and so much to discuss the future, just the two of them. Still, Jaemin found himself unable to do anything but play that song on repeat the entire ride to their new home. He'd missed his mother so much he should want to fill his ears with her voice and blind his vision with her smile.  
All he could see was Jeno, out of the corner of his eye, sitting perfectly on that rock with his old guitar. All he could hear was that song, not through his headphones, but coming from Jeno's throat and filling every inch of Jaemin's heart. The butterflies had followed him home and Jeno had kept a piece of Jaemin there.


End file.
